914world is showing its age

The recent outage was not due to some cyber attack or malicious plotting from the darkest depths of the interwebs.

It was simply due to the forum software being overwhelmed by the amount of data stored here combined with the amount of traffic we're receiving.

Fact is, the software we're running on is more than 20 years old, written at a time when the internet was a much different place.
It was never meant to run for this long or handle the amount of data we have accumulated.


So what are our options?

- Keep going until everything crashes and burns into a pile.

- Start over fresh with a new server with new forum software. We'd be losing everything we have.

- Try to fix some of the issues by re-writing parts of the software, reworking the database and changing the way uploaded images are stored. Maybe even update the server itself while we're in there.


While the last choice seems the obvious one, the problem is that i do have a day-job that needs my attention and my time is limited.
It would also mean i'd probably have to shut down the site for a longer period of time, maybe a week or two, and maybe more than once.

Thank you Sir Andy!!
Must it be you volunteering? Is the price tag of hiring help way too high for our ability to chip in to match? I am volunteering some cash.

I would venture that we could do a little fund-raising around here and come up with enough to keep this chugging along.

The obvious middle ground for me would be new software that migrates the old stuff in....

Is it possible to start fresh with new software for the best function and expediency, and lock future input to but preserve the current site as an archive to make it accessible/searchable for future reference?

A previous favorite car site of mine was in a similar situation. The site had crashed, the admin had moved on. I was at the meeting when new people were voted in, and they asked about the site, the vote from the new president was to trash the old and start fresh. They assigned new IDs, new passwords and moved on. I was an admin and a moderator. All of history, conversations, photos, information was gone. We lost information with people that had passed away, all just thrown aside to be bits and bytes in some scrap pile somewhere. I never used my new login to that site, never went back and moved on. Maybe that is what moved me to 914s and this community.

Please try to save and maintain access to the data and history of this great community at all costs. I will be glad to put my money where my mouth is. Get volunteers, hire people, whatever it takes. Come up with a plan and a budget and publish it and let's try to meet those goals. Use the knowledge and experience of the group and get it done the right way.

I say do whatever you think is Best Andy so we can continue to enjoy our World and the friends we have made here. I am in for $100 to help upgrade.
Cheers,
Michael

I do think that we should be starting over with new forum software. That said, there are several free (or at least open source) forum options that use SQL as their database. We would likely be able to import our past topics. We would likely loose the look and feel of our current forums, though.

Zach

…..what he said.

Another option might be train some of us monkeys into data "movers".

Light up a new server/software (something with a really good search engine!)

Lock the old one down only giving access to your trained simians on a different web address.

Let the monkeys go to work transferring everything over...

I'd go MONKEY!

I'd want save the good stuff first...

I'd also re-organize a bit.

Things like have a forum "induction" with sub forum of Carbs, D-Jet, L-jet, Modern and so on.
Engines could be broken down, T4, P6, Subi, others.

Lapuwali should stay in its entirety...

Ask for donations, assistance.

Warn everyone to save their own data is possible (I'm thinking messages and such).

Take a poll on how it should be built.

Just a thought

@SirAndy , I suggest "Keep going until everything crashes and burns into a pile" is not desired by anyone here.

Care to PM me some details on database size and general bandwidth usage?

I've recently ported two VBulletin forums to XENForo, primarily to ensure the historical data will not be lost. These no longer have a lot of activity (most new users are on Facebook now) but the databases were saved. It has off-shore support and all conversions, space, and bandwidth is being done in exchange for donations.

Depending on how much space and load we're talking about, maybe we can do the same thing here, to the same place.

https://improvedtouring.com/
https://prodracing.com/

Lemme know what we're dealing with here.

Edit: oh, and I'm pretty much pretired now, unless something nice and juicy gets dropped into my lap without me having to work to find it...

count me in 100%

What great group, hands down

I develop software for a living. I'm sure there are many others here, too. I don't pretend to specialize in Forums but would be happy to help, if needed. I personally think we should start fresh and leave this stuff in-place as a reference (i.e. no new posts).

Can't lose the site or the info that is here now. I am totally computer illiterate (probably why I like the old AC cars) but would chip in more $$ to keep something going!
We can't lose all the info that is here now!

If you are looking for new forum software, I can recommend Discourse...

https://www.discourse.org/

The 3D CAD forum where I hang out (rhino3d.com) has dozens of new posts per day, 24/7 worldwide. It's a little different format than the old PHP-style forums like this one - way better IMHO - but YMMV.

Migrating from the old format to any new format is probably impossible, so the idea of keeping the old forum running as an archive is good. However, that will also require some effort and expense I expect.

Saving the data base is the top priority as I see it, it is a treasure trove of information most valuable for the maintenance of our old cars. I would certainly be willing to make a substantial money donation to rebuilding the site and continue our love affairs with these old driving machines.

@ SirAndy
Number 1, thank you for all that you do for us!


I am here to kick in some cash to help. We have a great database on 914s from our members, I would hate to lose that.

If I was to ad up the time, I have spent over the last 18 years I figure it would be around 10,000 hours. I have kicked in $25. A year so I have paid up so far $450. I think that is $.05 an hour
That my brothers is a screaming deal.


Best Bob B

I vote for whatever seems easiest and least intrusive to those (Sir Andy) that volunteer. I would be more than happy to willing to chip in however it’s needed

I have no idea what it cost to develop or operate a forum, but I would also be willing to contribute. 914WORLD has been a resource for so many out here and should be preserved if at all possible. Thank you @sirandy for all your efforts.

Also voting for not letting it 'burn to the ground'.
I'm envisioning a new hosted site with new software, but also a link to the the old site, also hosted.

Is it an option to migrate the current server and historical data is it currently operates to a cloud-based VM(s) to preserve the historical data, and allow it to be accessed as we're doing so now, but in a 'read only' mode so that it's locked down and doesn't grow further in size? A VM would allow an easy button to 'restore from backup' should the site crash. I expect that if it was in read-only mode, it would be less likely to go down.

The above would require a way to cover ongoing costs, but I can imagine lots of ways of funding that (dues, events, sponsors, etc.).

Yes, hard stop. Invision Power Board (this forum) uses a MySQL back end which can be migrated to any current forum software (we use XENForo). No loss of data, and no need to create an "archive" location.

The forum will look and feel differently, but all the data will be there. You just keep using it as-is (after we stop waving our canes at the sky about how things are in a different place).

It all depends on what Andy wants/needs to do. - GA

Do something before it's too late, see my previous post...

Wow! That sounds like an option. I have zero computer knowledge but I would be more than happy to contribute to the cost to keep our World live. It would be a sad day to loose everything in the depths of a asteroid belt.

Seems to me it's important to sustain an independent community forum for posterity. Perhaps Sir Andy could calculate how much funding would it take to archive the entire data base and migrate it to powerful new servers and operating system and maintain it going forward. if we knew what that amount is a go fund me , or crowdsource launch could raise that amount.. We could see , in real time, progress towards that amount in a given amount of time. We should all chip in to help Sir

mark

Two votes here for keeping 914world a stand-alone forum.

Another forum that i had spent way too much time on slowly died due to The Facebook. Definitely don't want that to happen here. The value here are all the knowledgeable members that are willing to share and help others. And the valuable historical information (if you can find it !).

If the site would accept larger sized pictures and automatically straighten them that would be fine with me

Just an FYI... I don't do Facebook, TickTock, or any other "social media". The only thing I use like that is LinkedIn. And that is for business.

Let's not go to Facebook.

Being an IT person myself, start over. Get the forum on current platform and SW.

I use 914 World a lot and would be happy to contribute $ where I could.

I have seen sites go the fb route, it's easy. Turned into a mostly younger group that lost the experienced contributors. It was never the same. I have also seen some sites that sold out. There is a big corporate group that goes around buying and converting popular sites. Then they start selling ads to pay for the site. None of those sites are ever the same again, look and feel gone, people leave in droves. Offshoots spring up but never match the old experience. It's not an age or ease of use thing for me, I have worked in IT most of my life, I make different choices.

How about we keep the existing site as an archive, as it is. No mods and completely read only.

We setup a new site with new software and port all the logins over from the old site. Once we cut over to the new site, we can have a search link to search the old archived site, and be able to link back to it.

I am a professional sysadmin, and I will donate all the time it takes for server setup and installation. I can even help with the software setup.

I definitely don't want to lose all of the contributions of Howard, Slits, Lapuwalli, and all of our friends that have passed.

And @gregamy , I think IPB is setup to use MSSQL for this board not MySql. Ether way, we can port the data over.



XENForo charges 195 for the license. I for one don't expect Andy to pay for the software license out of his pocket. And I don't know what the hardware requirements are for XENForo. So we may end up paying for new hardware too.

I do migrations and server capacity planning for a living. So I know this stuff. We have to CAREFULLY plan it out or we are going to be suffering withdrawls from 914World while the server is down.

I'm afraid a migration won't be that simple. I've looked into this before.


There are several problems:

- The current forum software is the last version of IPB before they went to a subscription model. Which means it *literally* is from 2006(!). Any migration effort would need to support an IPB version that old.

- Any new forum software needs to have a way to store uploaded images on the hard-drive in a way that is scalable (Preferably a date based folder tree). Simply putting all images into one uploads folder is going to cause one of the issues we're having right now. We have over 1,300,000 images and counting in a single folder. They take up 360GB of space. I have yet to see an OS that won't balk at having that many images in a single folder.

- Any new forum software needs an option to suck down any linked images from 3rd party websites and store a copy of them locally. Otherwise you'll end up with older threads with broken and lost images.

- Any new forum software needs to be able to handle over 3 million posts in a single database table that is almost 3GB in size. I know MySql itself can handle that, but if the forum software wasn't made to handle numbers like that (like our software never was) we'll end up spending all the time to migrate just to have the same issues again (or worse).

- Any new forum software needs to be owned outright. No subscription service. We need to be able to run our own copy on our own server. Running this as a service in AWS is way too expensive.

ZFS could probably handle a folder like that, but that is no reason to keep doing what is rather poor practice.

I preserve several websites for posterity (science stuff). Stuff running on cold fusion and other long dead technologies.

Having the old site there for history is critical to me. We lost Foureyedpride.com and there were decades of really important information from engineers that are no longer with us, stories from Ford employees, etc. All gone.

Definitely move to free and new but hopefully choose something with a sane backend (like mysql or whatever flavor you like). I wouldn't bother importing old info if you can preserve what we have like a museum piece (put it up on blocks?).

I have no IT expertise but SirAndy’s dedication to these principles is what makes this site so useful and unique.

Most sites and forums are so loaded with broken links it makes them useless and not worth revisiting.


I don’t know the answers to the problem at hand but trust SirAndy’s wisdom on these two points alone.

Here to help in anyway that a gearhead mechanical engineer can; even if that is only to chip in on costs to do what needs doing.

Man I was on foureyedpride for a few years. That was a great site

Agree 1000% with Clay about facebook, etc. Proud to say I've never done facebook or tik tok etc. Hell, I spend enough time between here, rennlist, and autosport.

Just don't want to lose all the information we have here, a lot of which is probably 10-15 years old. I mean our cars are over 50 years old!!!!

Our guy just did some miracles on some really old stuff. Like 2000 vintage VBulletin. If you want to talk to him, I can introduce you.

And we do run our own software. We buy a license and download and install it. We don’t have virtual servers that some are going to. It continues to run even if you don’t buy licenses for updates.

But...do whatcha gotta do. I'll hang out here until it all dies in a fire.

Sounds like we need to put TC on a time out It's a fun thread to look thru but it's not the important stuff. That's 240,000 images.

I haven't done web design in 20 years either, so I don't have much to offer as a solution.

Anything is possible now that AI writes code.

Just thought I would chip in that it appears Discourse covers migration with their business plan (expensive... but they do it for you) https://discourse.org/pricing

Then once migration is over, you could switch to self hosting it maybe?

Edit: Found a topic from 8 years ago discussing a similar migration: https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-from...course/34639/16

I have no experience with running forums and no affiliation with them, just thought it interesting. I have 24TB of spare storage running on truenas scale if you want a redundant backup in cold storage during a migration

Would be happy to donate funds to the cause

Ditto, been on this board for 22 years do what it takes to keep it running.

I'm In also

Kevin

Just my two cents worth. Please don't go to Facebook. The site would become infested with scammers and people trying to sell t-shirts constantly claiming they were designed by their "autistic/disabled daughter trying to raise funds for her schooling, special needs, ad nauseam."
The depth and degree of knowledge on 914World make it the Best Car Site on the Internet. We don't want to lose the tips and tricks provided in the past by contributors like Captain Krusty and Jake Raby, just to name a couple of them. Let us know how much we can contribute to keep this 914 running.

Yep, I’m in too… PLEASE no FB, TT, IG, X or any other social media. That will be the end of anything useful, organized and civil.

I'd be in for a $100 "site restoration fee" and I'm not wealthy.

I'd bet 200-300 others would donate at that level.

Some of our wealthy folks might go more...

Would 30K help?

I'm in agreement with the "own the software" but the "powers that be" have "subscriptions" as the way forward.

This site (with ZERO annoying pop ups) is the ONLY forum I've joined that was "clean".

I freaking love it and am happy to pay for the experience.

I haven't even seen someone get banned here! (scammer don't count).

The NO "Politics or Religion" is another unusually rule. I hadn't seen that before either but it's an IMPROVEMENT in my book!

The active members on this site deserve it (best members too!) and should ALL pitch in to help Sir Andy in any way possible.

I'm good for a C-note and I'm a cheap bastard!

What say you, Gentlemen and Ladies (can't forget Tinker) ?

There is already a 914World on facebook, run by Eric, one of the admins here as well. Whatever happens we will not be trying to recreate the wheel and starting something new via social media.

Zach

Like others, I'm willing to put my money where my mouse is.

It is invaluable to be able to search past threads and learn from them, and I think that is what attracts new people to this site and motivates a fair number of people to visit and participate. It would be tragic if all that went down the drain. I still rely on the advice and techniques of long gone members, a few of whom were mentioned earlier. I just read that we lost another long time member today. We we also lose everything that he contributed? That would be a double tragedy. I'm hopeful that the solution, in whatever form it is, preserves the history of this site. I don't have the fund of knowledge or the skills to take on this task, and it is easy to make work for other people, but my vote would be to prioritize any solution that preserves what work has been done thus far. If we lose that I think we also lose this forum.

I'd be happy to contribute $$. Maybe a special fund raiser. This site is really the best. I'm grateful everyday that I look at it.

Any thoughts about doing a cleanup purge? Surely there are posts that are off topic etc. Also images that are too large or low value. I know that would be hard... but hard choices might could be in everyone best interest.

Perhaps some assistant sysops that could monitor and work to cleanup off topic items more real-time.

Count me in. 914World has gone through many phases since I joined and it would be a big loss to the 914 community, both mechanical and social if it had to start over.

I've been with 914-world since it's migration from 914-the-previous-bb. Much of the value comes from the cumulative contributions from experts, enthusiasts and hobbyists that have posted here over the past couple decades. The culture of supporting this crazy hobby would be diminished I think if we let it burn or started from scratch.

FWIW, I vote for Andy's option 3 and would be fine with some down-time in the transition. Sounds like some software-type members are willing to help, but that may not be actually feasible - Andy's call. If there's a financial need, I'm willing to contribute.

G

sounds like many potential contributors. Please excuse my ignorance, as I know nothing about websites/software/hardware, any of this, but if the head honcho (Andy)is willing and we know the $$ required, we can keep this ship afloat

Will gladly contribute to this too.

I have recently gone on FB and it's probably me but I wouldn't know where to start to find information . This feed thing (like LinkedIn) doesn't apply to the type of activities we have here.

I fully trust the brain power here to address the issue, just like it does for our beloved little car!

Thank you Andy for everything you do and for the daily dose of therapy...

...plus, we need to know what happens to the Ferrari build!

EDIT: I believe Go Fund Me takes a chunk of the donation (obviously). Seems like the direct money transfer would garanty all the last coins to be used towards this place.